What can be said of a religion whose the holiest site, Kaaba, was itself built by demolishing an existing place of worship of another religion!

11:26 am December 4, 2012

India wrote:

The Kaaba was built by Prophet Abrahim himself, the father of all the Prophets .

11:29 am December 4, 2012

India wrote:

The Hindus temple statues are even nude Lol ! I suggest kids don't watch this Lol ! This is for age 18 only Lol !

11:34 am December 4, 2012

India wrote:

Is this statue the God of juggling ?

12:28 pm December 4, 2012

anurag wrote:

exactly truth is what we don't know, but if this masjid was build over mandir by babar then that was wrong
muslims brother donot belive in worship so they can pray any where, they should made this place free for thier hindu brothers who are the part of thier family also.

People who fight about a place that mentioned in a "story" thousands of years ago...need to grow up!!! Open your eyes!!!! Hundreds of millions of people in India are dying everyday of poverty and you are fighting for "some" random place mentioned in "some story"!!!! GOT TO BE KIDDING!!!!!

9:09 pm December 4, 2012

bd wrote:

"The Kaaba was built by Prophet Abrahim himself, the father of all the Prophets " - Prrove it. Just like the "the Earth was built in 7 days". Slowly these "facts" are proven wrong. That is why the Bhudha statues were blown up - to wipe out the original history of the peoples who lived there.
The present behaviour of the intolerant shows us what they did in the past.
All you have to do is read about the history of the Alexandria libraries, and the true history of the Mongol -of whom the Mohgals are a direct descendent of. It will make you cring of their autrocities,

9:18 pm December 4, 2012

The Truth.... wrote:

Please check out the history of Kaaba.

How Kaaba once was a place of worship of original Arabian people and the main diety of which was Hubal?

How upon conquering Mecca, Muslims destroyed the idols that were inside Kaaba and rebuilt it as Muslims' place of worship!

9:24 pm December 4, 2012

Speculator wrote:

Nice article. Article starts from 50s but later it talks about 1500s. Is author planning to go more on history?

9:30 pm December 4, 2012

Anil Shrivastava wrote:

All said and done, I will not dream of making a Rama temple in Vatican or Mecca because I believe in respecting their sentiment. Do we ever consider the sentiment of the Hindus? This should not have been a topic of discussion, period!

By the way, I respect all the religions.

9:53 pm December 4, 2012

Common Sense wrote:

I stopped reading after "Polished, intellectual and skeptical of religion, Nehru was trying to propel the nation into an era of modern socialism and scientific thinking."

10:33 pm December 4, 2012

Jay wrote:

* India wrote:

The Kaaba was built by Prophet Abrahim himself, the father of all the Prophets .

Wrong.

Neither the Jews nor the Christians believe that the Kaaba was built by Abraham or Abrahim as Islam would call him.

Kaaba was a multi-deity site before Mohamed destroyed it and built the Kaaba.

If Kaaba was truly built by Abraham the Vatican and the Jews would have long claimed it as the center of their religion - they claim Jerusalem far, far away from where Kaaba is located.

10:43 pm December 4, 2012

concerned wrote:

Babar, born in Samarkhand, descendent of Genghis Khan and Tamarlane, who were one of the most cruel muslim invaders and aggressors of Central Asia during middle ages , invaded India and like other muslim conquerors had raided and plundered the whole of north India and destroyed and broke Hindu holy temples and one of that was Ramjanambhoomi temple built by King Vikramaditya in the 4th century a.d. during Golden Hindu period . Ayodhya, is one of the holiest places of Hindus where Babar had destroyed the Ramjis temple and had built a mosque over that structure in 15th century.
After almost thousand years during which the country was suppressed and humiliated , on the early morning hours of 15th August 1947 India awoke to freedom. A few years after , Lord Ramjis' idol went back to Ram Janambhoomi temple from where it was plundered and destroyed by the foreign aggressor, Babar.

1:06 am December 5, 2012

Mike wrote:

how silly. So they claim Ram was born in the mosque. How convenient that the mosque was the exact location the sadhu's wanted. I can claim my dead great-great grandfather owned all of India and put a flag on Delhi, does that make it so? Silly claims. The court should uphold law, not religious belief. Let Ram defend himself in court if he cares.

1:15 am December 5, 2012

Mike wrote:

So they claim Ram was born in the mosque. How convenient that the mosque was the exact location the sadhu's wanted. I can claim my dead great-great grandfather owned all of India and put a flag on Delhi, does that make it so? Silly claims. The court should uphold law, not religious belief. Let Ram defend himself in court if he cares.The kabbaa story is just a phoney-baloney. It was a pagan stone stump, just like the phallic symbol Hindus worship. Muhammad made up a story to make it fit his politics and to fight with other people who thought he was crazy. Simplest answer is the most reasonable.

1:58 am December 5, 2012

Alex Ludgate wrote:

Why didn't the rest of India's muslims at the time of partition follow Anisur Rahman, the tin shop keeper into Pakistan? Their progeny would today be happy members of the Pakistani Taliban. Instead of that we are now reading about an old shop keeper who "remembers" Anisur Rahman, whose descendants cannot be traced! Lots of people can "remember" things. Doesn't make them facts. WSJ has written a gripping story, but that's all it really is. A story.

3:50 am December 5, 2012

ss wrote:

Why is WSJ wasting time on an issue/problem that is never going to be solved? The people are just immature for a solution. India's soul are it's people, not a mosque or a temple in Ayodhya. Hope the people of India & WSJ realize that. Time to move on, there are better things to write about and more important problems to solve.

4:13 am December 5, 2012

TolerantChristian wrote:

It is unfair for the article to use the word "idol" instead of the more neutral term "statue". "Idol" in the English tongue implies that the God is false and not the True God. Good journalism shouldn't take sides like this. I personally don't believe in Lord Rama but I respect other people's beliefs. If I was a journalist I would use the more neutral "statue" so that I wouldn't pass judgement on someone's religion.

11:48 am December 5, 2012

India wrote:

Prophet Abrahim rebuild the Kaaba in Mecca that burnt down long before him ad he married an Arab and Jewish woman ? Prophet Jesus and Prophet Mohammed are his direct descendants , that is why we call him father of all Prophets .

12:25 am December 6, 2012

Jay wrote:

Besides the Muslims, no one else claims that Prophet Abraham ever built or rebuilt the Kaaba. The only reference to such a building claim is the Quran , not the Christian Bible nor the Jewish Torah.

11:16 pm December 6, 2012

The Truth... wrote:

@Jay. This is exactly what happens.

First invade, loot and torture native people. Destroy their place of worship and build a mosque in its place. Then torture and forcibly convert native people to Islam. After couple of generations later, the converted Muslims forget that their great grand parents and ancestors were tortured and converted to Islam and whose places of worshp were destroyed and mosques built in its place. Finally, no remnant of native people and its culture is left and hence no one is left to claim the converted place of worship.

This has happened in Mecca, where no remanant of original Arabian people is left and hence no one is left to claim Kaaba.

And now this is happening in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. For example, do you know anyone in Multan who knows about the famous Sun Temple, how it was destroyed, etc.? and the same question for all of the famous places of worships that were destroyed and replaced by mosques.

11:43 pm December 8, 2012

Heavenly_Observer wrote:

Good work by WSJ. It is always good to listen to an outsider's reading of things when the issue at hand is complicated and involves deep passions. Let me make few points here:-

1)There is no way to factually establish whether Ram was born at that exact location under the Dom, and whether he did born at all all or was just a creation of ancient writers. The only fact that we can establish is that Ram and anything that is related to him are very close to the hearts of millions of Hindus. And we should respect that. There is no way to erase the belief, rather conviction, that was put into their minds by generations of religious gurus and politicians, who did so for the purpose of creating their on prominence and legacy.

2) It may be possible to factually establish whether a Temple stood at the site Babri masjid was built in 1528. But it will be very difficult to get everyone to agree to any one conclusion, and to make a precise conclusion whether the masjid was built after tearing down a temple, or was just built at a site where the ruins of an abandoned temple existed. But one thing that the majority will agree as historical fact is that Muslim rulers invaded India at certain point in history and took affirmative steps to spread Islam. This included building mosques, converting people to Islam, and probably ruining, or not allowing, structures of other religions.

3)It is a very clear verifiable fact that Babri masjid existed in Ayodya at the time of India's independence and that it was a place of worship for muslims. Now considering the above two points, the questions comes down to whether a present day reality should be reversed, or demolished, to do justice to the beliefs, not supported or half supported by facts, of majority of the people of the land. This cannot be done without hurting the feelings of the minority who respect, and probably enjoy, the present day reality. And this decision will have far reaching implications in other similar cases, religious or not. This is the decision that Nehru faced and probably he decided to go with the present day reality of masjid. But he did not have the courage or resources to implement his decision. So it dragged on for decades.

4) Six decades after India's independence, the new reality is that Babri Masjid does not exist in Ayodhya any more and millions of lives have been lost over this issue. Now that we struggled over it for so long, it is probably good to do some introspection and ask some questions to ourselves as Indian, including Muslims and Hindus. Is any one of us better off today than 60 years ago because of anything that happened, or not happened in Ayodhya ? Do you think any one of us will be better off in the next 50 years whether a Temple or Masjid, or both are built there. Does Allah or Ram want us to fight more to establish or re-establish their claim to an earthly procession ? It will also be good to look at who actually benefited from the conflict over the last 60 years. All I can see is that a handful of people made their political career, number of people got public limelight which they would have never got except for Ayodhya issue, and number of religious figures earned their livelihood and satisfied their own urge to do something.

5)Whatever happens in Ayodhya one thing is clear. As more and more people get educated, get employed and realize their own potential to do good on this earth, there will be fewer and fewer people willing to sacrifice their time, energy and life over the issues of non-earthly matters. Also, they will see that the very people who encourage their passions have very clear earthly, and political, ambitions which are different from the so called spiritual goals to support their own Gods. After why would God require men to help him to process, or retain, an earthly procession. It is not totally unreasonable to suspect that few men want God, not the other way around, to claim/retain their earthly procession or earthly political goal and a lot of innocent people are being used as their pawns.

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